Until May 14, 2023, Jameel Art Centre is holding an exhibition of Lebanese-American artist Daniele Genadry. It is a part of Artist’s Rooms, a series of solo shows by mostly Middle Eastern, Asian, and African artists, drawn from the Art Jameel Collection. The Genadry’s exhibition features her painting Blind Light (2017) and her new art pieces influenced by her research in la Rochelle and Cassis, France and the Grand Canyon, the USA.
Genadry’s artistic practice, which includes painting, photography, printing, and installation, draws on her travelling between Lebanon, Italy, and USA. In her art, she explores distance, light, and movement and their influence on visual experiences. With the main focus on the relationship between painting and photography, she examines the image’s potential and takes it to its limits. “The contrast between the experience of seeing and the photograph (looking at a room and looking at a photo of the room) makes me realise […] something absent from the photo, also unnoticeable while just looking”, Genadry says. “[…] The photograph […] reveals what is missing […] and starts the process of trying to make something.” To draw her landscapes, the artist takes pictures of the chosen scenes. After that, she paints them in a blurry and transparent manner, beginning with very light color layers, and thus makes her paintings seem to be covered with a white layer. Through her works, the artist aims to give the viewer a heightened and intense view of presence, fragility, and disappearance.
Speaking about the Blind Light show, Genadry said: “The […] works carry the idea of light and the impression it leaves, and […] I was seeking […] to create a physical experience through light, installation and the way people look at the exhibition because of this manipulation of lighting […]”.
About the artist
Daniele Genadry (born in 1980) resides between Paris, France, and Beirut, Lebanon. In 2002, she received her BA at Dartmouth College, Hanover, USA, in Studio Art and Mathematics; in 2008, she graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art, London, UK, with a MFA degree. Genadry works as an assistant professor at the Department of Fine Arts and Art History at the American University of Beirut.
Genadry has taken part in residencies at the Bronx Museum, Anderson Ranch Art Center (USA); Fondazione Ratti (Italy); and Frans Masereel Centrum (Belgium). From 2013 to 2014, the artist was the Abbey Scholar at the British School, Rome. In 2019, she was a fellow at the Bogliasco Foundation, Italy.
Genadry’s art has been displayed in numerous solo and group exhibitions: Slow Light, Beirut Art Center, Beirut, Lebanon (2018); Light Fall, Gypsum Gallery, Cairo, Egypt (2017); Missing Real, Taymour Grahne Gallery, New York, NY (2015); La Fabrique des illusions, Sursock Museum (2019); Tamawuj, Sharjah Biennial 13, Sharjah, UAE (2017); Poetics, Politics, Place, BienialSur, Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes, Tucuman, Argentina (2017); But Still Tomorrow Builds into My Face, Lawrie Shabibi Gallery, Dubai (2016); and many others. Genadry’s artworks have been added to such collections as The Cleveland Clinic Collection, Ohio and Abu Dhabi; Saradar Collection, Beirut, Lebanon; and Frans Masereel Centrumm, Belgium.
To learn more about the Blind Light exhibition, please visit its official web page.
You might be also interested in visiting Raise Vibration at Infinity des Lumières.
